AMD E2-3800

The AMD E2-3800 is a mobile quad-core SoC for low-end laptops, which was presented in November 2013. In addition to 4 CPU cores with a clock speed of 1.3 GHz (no Turbo), the 28-nanometer chip also integrates a Radeon HD 8280 GPU, a single channel DDR3(L)-1600 memory controller as well as the Southbridge with various I/O- ports.

Architecture

Both Kabini (for notebooks) and Temash (tablets and compact subnotebooks) are based on AMD's new Jaguar architecture, which replaces the previous Bobcat models (e.g. the E-350). The performance per clock has been increased by about 20 percent. Furthermore, various modern instruction set extensions such as SSE up to version 4.2, AVX and AES are now supported. The finer 28-nanometer process from TSMC allows lower voltages and/or higher clock rates compared to Bobcat, as well as up to 4 CPU cores (Bobcat: 2 cores).

Performance

Due to the low clock speed of 1.3 GHz, the performance in poorly parallelized applications is quite modest and just slightly above the old E-350. However, if all 4 cores are busy, the performance equals the Sandy-Bridge-based Core i3-2357M. For office and multimedia tasks, the E2-3800 has sufficient power; however, it will reach its limits in more demanding applications and games.

Graphics

The SoC integrates a Radeon HD 8280 GPU with 128 shaders, which is based on the GCN architecture and clocked at 450 MHz (no Turbo). On average, the HD 8280 places slightly below a Radeon HD 7470M or Intel HD Graphics 4000. Many recent games (as of 2013) are therefore hardly playable. However, some older or less demanding games will run fluently.

Power Consumption

The power consumption of the entire SoC is rated at 15 watts. Thus, the E2-3800 is a bit more economical than its predecessors (E2-1800: 17 watts) and suitable for smaller subnotebooks.